Prostrate

Doctor: "Well Christian, we've run just about every test imaginable and we've got nothing."

Me: "I suppose I should be relieved Doc, but that still leaves the question of what the hell is wrong with me."

Doctor: "I'm starting to suspect it may have something to do with your prostate."

Me: "Really?"

Doctor: "And unfortunately the only way to check this would be with a rectal examination. But you've had a long week, and I don't really think you want me shoving my hand up your ass right now."

Me: "No, not today Doc."

Doctor: "Excellent, so I'll just write you a prescription for some more antibiotic and you'll be on your way. Have a nice day Chris."

Me: "You too Doc, thanks for not cramming your hand up my ass. Appreciate that. And hopefully I won't see you anytime soon. Have a good one."

Noon

There's a seven year old boy sitting at my desk. He notices a picture and asks me who it's of...

"Hey fat boy, who's that?"

"She's a friend."

"Oh? You married?"

"No, she's just a friend."

"You ain't married to anyone? You don't have no kids?"

"No. Not married. No kids."

"You alone?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"You don't even have two kids?"

"No, not two kids."

"One and a half kids?"

"What?"

"You don' t have one and a half kids?"

"No, no kids."

"What about an inchworm? A goldfish?"

"What?"

"Like pets. You don't have no pets?"

"I have a dog."

"Oh yeah, so you're not alone. You have a dog."

"Yeah..."

"See it's not so bad. You thought you were alone. But you have a dog. You can't be alone with a dog."

"I just want you to know that this is the most depressing conversation I've had all week. And that's saying quite a bit."

"I don't know what that means."

"I know, you're still young."

"Ok fat boy, where's bad boy? He's more fun than you. You make me sad."

"He's not in today."

"Ok. I'm going to play pokemon."

"Ok."

"I should have used harden to get the paralyze off."

"Wait, what?"

"Pokemon. I should've used harden to get the paralyze off. I gotta leave to kill the cascoon with the poison from horse with the fire on his mane. Try not to be alone fatboy. Bye."

"Later kid."

The Future Of This House

Yesterday
I muddled around quite a bit, trying to get my head right and decide what I was doing for the rest of the day. I grabbed lunch with Jeremiah and then spent the next few hours plotting out a conversation I would never end up having. I stumbled through the rest of the day trying to get straight and when I locked up just before seven it was a mad dash over to the dry cleaners to pick up my clothes. I was intending to go out. I stopped to chat with The Rookie for a bit and then headed home, totally forgetting to eat dinner even though I was starving. My brain was grinding hard. It wasn't a good feeling. So I hopped on the treadmill and walked until my brain stopped hurting. Then I shot upstairs, hopped in the shower, and headed into the living room to dry off and get dressed fully intending to go out. I wrapped myself in a clean towel, sat down in my chair and grabbed another towel to dry my hair . Three hours later I was still sitting there. Still wrapped in that towel having done and said nothing much but having thought about quite a bit.

2 Night Old Dreams
The other night I was dreaming trippy. Three separate dreams stand out. Here they are.

I was in some sort of home with tall glass windows and flat wooden ceilings. There were little pools in the middle of each room and I could see sea monsters swimming below, drifting from room to room. At first I was alone but then other people started to show up. They were all very quiet and I somehow got the impression that we were in a sort of museum. I walked around the edges of the room trying to avoid getting anywhere near the openings for fear of falling into the water with the sea monsters. But there were other people clustered in the corners of the room and every time I reached a corner I'd have to move closer to the center of the room just to get around them. One of these times the room was so crowded that I had to step over the edge of the pool and I thought it odd that I made the jump with such great ease. But as I entered room after room and they grew more and more crowded I found myself leaping over larger and larger pools. None of it seemed all that difficult, it just seemed odd. And then I reached what looked like the last room. It was practically empty and the only door I could see was the one I had just entered through. The opposite wall had no windows, it was just tall and white and somewhat imposing. I started to turn back but then I noticed a small girl standing by the pool. I wondered why she was standing there all alone so I walked over to her and said hello. She looked up at me and smiled, but didn't say anything back and soon returned to staring into the pool. I asked if she was ok and without looking at me she shook her head "yes" and then jumped into the pool. I panicked thinking about what all these gigantic sea monsters would do to this pretty little girl so I jumped in after her hoping to save her. The water was heavy and warm and though it was perfectly clear I couldn't see the bottom or the walls of the pool in any direction. The girl was nowhere to be found, but there were so many sea monsters I wondered how they didn't crash into each other as they thrashed about. Suddenly unsure whether there was a little girl in the first place I tried to surface only to find that the openings into the building were all gone and I could see nothing above my head at all. It was then I realized I could breathe perfectly find under water and knowing I had no other choice I began to swim amongst the monsters, hoping they wouldn't notice me and hoping I was heading in the right direction.

I was sitting near a camp fire under a gigantic overpass. It looked like I was under a highway, but I could hear no cars. In the distance I could see light and the sky so I knew it was daytime, but hidden so far from the opening the only light that mattered to me was the numerous campfires spread evenly about 30 feet apart. I could see other people I knew huddled near their fires, mostly in pairs sometimes in threes. But I seemed to be the only one alone, and no one seemed to be moving about. I got up and tried to walk towards one particular pair but found that I was unable to travel past the glow of my own fire. I tried calling out to them but it seemed like they must be much farther away than I thought. Once or twice when calling out to a particular person they seemed to have heard me, but they could not seem to locate where they sound was coming from, and when they reached the edge of their fires glow then wandered back towards their partner uncertain they had heard anything at all. After one such attempt to reach someone a few fires away I heard the sound of a man's voice shushing me, but I couldn't find where the noise had come from either. I waited a moment and then shouted, "Hello?" And then strained to hear where the responding "shush" came from. But it did no good. And then I noticed an old man wandering from fire to fire occasionally disappearing into the dark only to resurface in the glow two or three fires away. If anyone else noticed him they didn't seem to let on. And try as I might I couldn't discover a pattern amongst his travels, he would disappear in the shadows and a few moments later reappear somewhere else never stopping for more than a moment and never speaking to anyone, so I was very much surprised when he disappeared near one fire and suddenly was standing right next to me. I stared at him and he stared back for a moment, a quizzical look on his bearded face, and then I slowly reached out my hand in greeting and said, "Hello?" He looked down at my hand, the horror growing on his face, and he quickly slapped it away. He spent a moment longer considering me and then sat down on the other side of the fire from me. He ran his hand through his mangy hair, shaking his head in wonder, spit on the ground, looked right at me and said, "You and I need to talk. But first I need a nap." And just like that he was out. I watched him sleep for a moment before curling up and falling asleep myself.

I was in Goffle Brook Park, sitting in a giant old glass phonebooth with its' roof ripped off. With me are two girls I know and one of the guys from work. The guy from work was explaining to me how someone we had to deal with was unreliable and we shouldn't really count on them. The girls were talking about girly things and occasionally gesturing in my direction and then either giggling or just out and out laughing at me. I wasn't sure what they were talking about but I'm sure it was about me and I'm sure it wasn't flattering. I can't stop looking at them, and despite myself (and despite the fact they're likely destroying me) I find myself smiling in their direction entirely too often. There's something flitting about high over our heads, but it seems normal to the others so I don't say anything. But it's got me sort of nervous. The girls keep talking, and I'm feeling overly protective so I keep moving closer to them and ask them to be quiet.. But the guy from work keeps talking too, and now I'm on the verge of panic. I tell him to shut the hell up, there's something out there and we don't want it to hear us. At that moment there's a loud noise in the distance and everyone goes dead quiet. We're sitting there straining to hear any sign of what it is lurking around in the darkness when a light flickers on from the floor of the phone booth clearly illuminating us for any monster to see. Something roars, the girls scream. I wake up myself, the last rattles of my own guttural screaming echoing in my ears.


Typical
My father is in the office today. Not because he has anything to do or needs to be here, but because his wife is a pain in the ass and he simply needed to get out of the house. He's currently on the phone with all sorts of utility and service providers from Florida arguing his heart out to try and get them to reverse charges made while he was away. He likes to leave his utilities regular, his TV, internet, and phone services all on while he's gone. It makes sense they shift him to a vacation rate for the six months he's up here and when he goes back they just click it over to regular. He saves a little money and avoids the hassle of getting everything set-up again when he gets down there. He can afford it, so it's not really a big deal. Except it's been a year since he's been gone from Florida, he never went back this year. They only shift rates for six months. Which means for the last six months the put him back to the regular rate. He's ok with this. He can afford it, it still makes his life easier, and he knew they would do this. Problem is his wife is not ok with it and she's up his ass to try and change it. You can't fight the power company, they're the only game in town. This man is going to try though. I've been sitting here for the last hour listening to him argue with full conviction about something he neither believes is right or really cares about one way or the other...and I've come to a not so shocking conclusion. If the 70 year old multi-millionaire can spend an hour arguing about $60 that he neither actually believes he is entitled to or actually cares whether or not he gets, is there really any chance I can win in the end?

In Defense of Desiring Normalcy

You'd think that since it was something of a seminal moment in my week I'd actually have some recollection of what it was...but I don't. Instead I have a fleeting memory of a feeling that I can't quite wrap my head around and will likely never be able to explain to anyone else. Trust me, last night I tried.

Most of the time my life is like me, an amorphous blob. The world throws shit at it and it changes shape to deal with that shit. My life is what it is and in lots of ways it still is what it always has been...it's just better than it used to be.

I don't really have the structure most people have in their life, the plan. Most of the time I don't want anything so I try not to waste my time figuring out exactly what it is I don't want. But it gets tougher. You can get so god damn lonely if you don't watch yourself, but it's just a weird sort of lonely when there is always so much going on. I run with a couple of different crowds, have enough regular haunts that there's always something going on, and have enough work always needing to be done that a few extra hours in the office are almost always productive. The kids live right up the street, my house always needs to be cleaned, and I've got enough dvds, video games, and books to keep me fairly entertained. I've also got a treadmill that is constantly in need of use. But I don't have what other people have...and I don't really know if I ever will.


So a brief second of normalcy flashing before my eyes got me thinking, and as it unfortunately so often does thinking got me talking, and then talking got me thinking some more and next thing you know I'm sitting on the floor of my bedroom staring up at the ceiling for six hours on a Saturday afternoon...and I don't even really know why. And it sort of dawned on me that what had been a fairly fantastic week was suddenly filled with heartache, and grief, and just a little bit of misery for no real reason at all.

So I got over it. Sort of.


My life can be described as a lot of things. Boring. Ordinary. Lacking. But never normal...it's never been normal. And that had never really bothered me. You can't miss what you've never had, right? But somewhere near the middle of this fairly pleasant week in that brief moment somewhere halfway between a queer little smile and wide toothy grin it hit me.

I felt normal.

And I liked it.

I fucking liked it.

Shit.

What do I do now?

Death, Doors, and A Little Bit of Languor

I really need a drink.

I think I'm sad. I know I'm tired.

I'd say that I can't put into words how I'm feeling right now but that wouldn't really be true, or fair. I can put words to these feelings...I just don't like the words very much.

I don't quite know how, but I've had a good time these past few days. None of it should have been any good, none of it should have been remotely enjoyable...but it was.

Friday night I went to see Transformers with some of the guys. It was just as shitty in IMax as it was in the regular theater. But it meant I got to hang out with the guys who I haven't spent much time with lately. And we did our fair share of laughing. So it worked out. Saturday morning I was feeling sort of blah so I didn't do much, but Saturday afternoon I headed over to Nick's for a BBQ. It's a little weird for me now though. All the guys are married, some are popping out kids. The wives barely tolerate me or find me mildly amusing, a relic from their husbands previous lives. In too many ways I represent all the things they want their husbands to leave behind, so I certainly appreciate that they tolerate me at all. Everyone was going to see The Hangover but I bailed at the last minutes to hang out at Wizards. What can I say? I missed Jerry.

Sunday I took the kids to lunch and while we were eating I received an unfortunate phonecall. One of the women who worked for me for a very long time passed away. She was a loud, cranky, hilarious old woman who reminded me a lot of my grandmother. I'll miss having her around. Finding out that she had unexpectedly passed put me in quite a bad mood for the first time in a long time. It sort of cast a cloud over the rest of the day. Add to that the fact that one of my mechanics mother's passed over the weekend and I knew I had a week full of wakes and funerals to look forward to. See how that ruins a holiday weekend for you. Sunday night I was going to pay a visit to an old friend but changed my plans last minute to grab a bite to eat with Alyssa and hang out at Wizards. And just as an aside has anyone else noticed that whenever my plans change at the last minute lately I end up at Wizards?

Then yesterday I was totally in the doldrums. I was actually, no question about it, feeling depressed. There were a couple of things that went into that. The first and foremost being the loss of someone I was rather fond of. The second being that I feel like I've let a few people down lately. People are supposed to be able to count on me, when they can't, it hurts. There are also too many people I care a great deal about hurting right now, and there's nothing I can do for them. On top of that there's an elephant in the room that I'm just not sure what to do about. So mix that all together and there I am being depressed all by myself in my office on what could have been an otherwise pleasant Monday afternoon. So I booked.

I ended up at the Barnes and Noble in Paramus. I wasn't going to buy a book, I'm already reading two right now (although I seem to have misplaced Choke) but I did want to see if I could track down the new Criterion DVD of Last Year at Marienbad. When I got up to B&N I was still feeling pretty shitty. I almost just turned around to go back to the office to sulk by myself. But I figured I was already there so I headed in. When I get to the door there's this woman walking out and I hold the door for her. I see that she's got a little boy, maybe four years old with her, so I hold the door for him too. But he won't let me, he wants to hold the door for me. I don't know if he's big enough to hold the door, he's such a tiny little guy and it's such a big door. But he kind of gives me this look like "Don't argue with me" and leans into the door with his entire body so I say "Thank you very much" and walk into the bookstore. The kid is beaming from ear to ear. And now I'm smiling too. I've been in a slightly better mood ever since.

I'm feeling this sort of emptiness, a hollowness, a weakness inside of me. I've got that creeping feeling like I just might want something that I can't have, and I don't like not being entirely clear about it.

There are things that you can share in this life. And then there are the things you can never, ever tell anyone because the damage it could cause would far outweigh any good that could come from it. There's nothing wrong with keeping secrets, but they sure can eat you up inside.

I've alternated between trying too hard and not trying hard enough my entire life. I feel like I never found that balance. For too long I've done things that I wasn't entirely sure I should because I thought I was helping. I was trying to make everyone happy. I just wasn't good enough.

You can't be everything to everyone, but if you're lucky some day you'll be everything to someone. Everything else is just a warm up.

I know I've made mistakes, and I've watched others make mistakes, and there were things I could have or should have or would have done differently...but I didn't. And if I tried to do it all again I would probably do it wrong in all new sorts of ways. It's just how it is.

You can't undo what's already been done, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Mistakes are like men, they grow old and die. We can only hope to outlive them.

So tonight I'll either sit in my office alone watching an old Bunuel film, or I'll find someone to have a drink with, or I'll wander the earth trying to sort out what suddenly is going wrong in my head.

Either way I already know... I've got this.

But I'm sure that drink would help.

Hello Again...

Hi there.

I know, I've been away for a bit. Not normal of me lately to go so long without posting. But it is what it is. I did write parts of one really fantastic post I think. But it wasn't quite ready, it wasn't quite finished. And now it's turned into something of a manifesto and I intend to keep working on it because it was the first thing in quite awhile that I was actually proud of writing.

The last few weeks have been, at the very least, interesting. Not a lot has happened, but enough has happened to keep me busy. I've sort of enjoyed them. I've had some wicked dreams these past few days as well, and that doesn't necessarily bode well for the near future. But we'll ride it out like we always do and just see what happens.

So what brings me back today of all days?

Well first off it's absolutely dead in the office. We have to be here because we still have buses running, but we're as ready as we can be for the start of things Monday. So I've got some time.

Second, I'm feeling pretty good today after a few days where I feel like I could have gone either way. So that's a pretty big plus. This weekend could be great or it could be disastrous, but I feel like I'm totally prepared to find out either way.

And finally, I just sort of missed writing here. So let me catch you up with what's been going on in my life lately. As if you gave a shit.

I was just coming off a stretch of dealing with some tricky situations. One I had decided how to deal with and was sticking strong to that course of action, another I was Machiavelli-ing in ways only I can but still not totally confident that it was going to go my way, and the third I was just sort of ignoring and hoping that would buy me some time to figure out a way for it to end well...or not end at all. None of it was the end of the world. But it sure as hell felt that way. So I'm coming off this stretch...and things got weirder.

Let me drop a few semi-crucial scene setting elements for you before I get going. First, anyone that knows me knows that for the last two years or so the ways I've balanced myself using scotch, comic books, and Eastern European go-go dancers. Judge away. If it wasn't for Glenlivet, Dark Horse Comics, and a pretty cute Moldovan chick I might not still be here right now. But in the past few months I've pretty much cut two of those three things out of my weekly routine. I've been in go-go bars more than your average person (once a month maybe?) and certainly read more comics than your average 28 year old (Come on, they put out two The Goon trade paperbacks in two months ,what was I supposed to do?) but the time dedicated to either one of those pursuits is a fraction of what it was seven or eight months ago. The reason? I just don't need either one of those things as much as I did seven or eight months ago. I still like to pay a visit to an old friend whenever I can, and I've still got a slow trickle of pre-ordered statues coming in (including my commission which just arrived) but it just seems like the joy I needed to draw from those things a year ago at this time isn't necessary right this second, and so they recede into a more tertiary position in my life. So I don't get to chatter incessantly and excitedly about doing shots with a half dozen nineteen year old Russian chicks, or the really nifty light up Iron Man statue I just got, or the fact that there are comics that mix things like God, assasins, and Irish Vampires. It doesn't mean I take less joy in any of these things (how can you take less joy from Iron Man and/or Russian chicks?) it just means I'm probably going to talk about it less. Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, not drinking in a go-go bar with an Iron Man statue. Actually I was at an all girls catholic school sitting in a class talking about not fucking kids. How's that for a transition? So last Thursday if I've got my timing correct a bunch of us church like types had to go to this keeping children safe thing so that we can continue being church like types and not pediophiles by default. We reacted to that exactly like you think we'd react to that. But we went anyway. Afterwards we grabbed a bite to eat and then after that we went and saw Transformers, which was pretty horrible. Then everything sort of went dark. Friday night I hung out with my little brother and sister. Saturday I was at my mom's house for a bit and then Sunday was mostly a blur. Monday I was working when Kevin, Al, and Alyssa stopped by to hang out for a bit. Tuesday is another blur. Wednesday night I grabbed dinner with Adge, then went to the Open Youth Room, then went to see Public Enenmies with Adge, Alyssa, Kevin, Al, and Boyle #2. The movie was pretty good, but definitely not great. It was weird though because on the way out we noticed that one of the actors from the movie had been sitting in the theater watching it with us. Last night I stopped by my mom's house for a minute to see my aunt, stopped by Rivara's for a drink with Tim, my father, and the guys from work, and then headed over to Wizards for a few drinks with Collette and Fish who was there with so many people I thought Jerry was going quit and stop serving drinks. It was a fun night. Tonight I'm going up to Palisades to see Transformers in IMAX with Jere, House, and Nate. I know what you're thinking, I thought the movie was horrible. But maybe it will be better when it's bigger and the seats are less comfortable. Probably not. But maybe.

Anyway...we'll see how the next few days go. See what sort of mood it leaves me in. I've got to sit down next week and take a long hard look at my financial situation, and my health, and my life in general. Maybe I'll do that Wednesday. Right after lunch. Maybe not. I don't know.

But I do know I have to do it sometime. And it should probably be soon. I'm getting worse even if I'm feeling better, and I really need to do something about that.

So a little bit of hello again, and a little bit of goodbye. But mostly just see you soon. Would I lie?

Fortune

I had chinese food for lunch today. When I was done I discovered not one, not two, but three fortune cookies at the bottom of the bag. I ate them one at a time and read the fortunes. In order this is what they said.

The weekend ahead predicts enjoyment.

It's up to you to make the next movie.

The first blow does not fell the tree.

Interesting. Very, very interesting...

Anyway here's a quick rundown of the past few days.

Friday. Long day at work. Playing some video games with The Rookie. Just chilling. Called it an early night. Saturday. Pre-Father's Day lunch with dad , Adge's graduation party, Year One at Garden State, late dinner at Land & Sea. Sunday. Bayonne to pick up James, Marlboro to pick up Corey, Philly for Wizard World. Awesome day. P.F. Chang's in Freehold for dinner, pick up Collette and Michelle, Wizards for the rest of the night. Monday. Another ass day at work. Glen Rock to get my new painting framed. New Memorial School for Little Sister's graduation. Pick up Alyssa and head over to Wizards for Collette's 21st. Several hours of drinking and bullshit later I'm standing in my living room trying to figure out how I repeatedly find myself in odd situations. Tuesday. Work. Work. Work. Odd voices? Work. Home.

We all caught up? Exellent.

Me: A Sideways Photo Album

Ah, the way the years have gone by. So it's over five years now since I graduated college and we're rapidly approaching my ten year high school reunion. I have friends who are hitting 30, friends who are married, friends who are popping out kids. And here I am. Just being me. Not sure how I feel about that exactly. So today I was looking at some old pictures and I decided to do something I rarely do...share them.

Ok, so this one is tiny. But then again back then so was I. This is my kindergarten picture. You can't quite tell but I was almost cute back then. The year was 1986, and as someone so politely pointed out earlier today they had the same kindergarten teacher as me...except in 1986 they weren't even born yet.

This is me senior year of high school. Starting left tackle by default for the Manchester Falcons. I was shit. So was the rest of the team, but we had a blast.

Wow. So this was my senior portrait...and it was the last time I looked like a human being as I recall. I'm pulling a bullshit photo smile in this one, but I was actually pretty happy right around then too as I recall. It's nice photo, until I found it today I'd forgotten it even existed.

Skip ahead another few years. This is December 2003. Few interesting things to note about this picture, although I was already well past 300 lbs in this picture I don't think I look all that bad. I also look ridiculously happy and that is quite simply because I was. And this isn't the bullshit happy smile. This is a real me smile. I kind of like that. Coincidentally I'm fairly certain this photo was taken on the day I started this blog.

I use this one as my Facebook photo most of the time. It's a very "me" picture. I'm older, fatter, uglier, and going bald too boot. Good times. This one was taken in February I think.

And then this is me right now. Ok, not right now exactly, but like four minutes ago. So as right now as you're going to get unless you're sitting across from me staring right at me.

But you get the point. Not that there really was a point. I'm just trying to avoid going out and drinking by myself again tonight, or working on contracts and bids, or going home and doing absolutely nothing. In reality I'm just avoiding reality. Even if only for a few moments.

And it sort of makes me feel better.

So well done.

June 17th, 1995

My little sister turns fourteen today. To celebrate I took her over to the Shops at Riverside to pick out a new purse. The night's running total? 1 Coach Purse: $298, 1 Matching Coach Wallet: $98, 4 Godiva Truffles: $8.80, 3 Godiva Hot Chocolates: $10.50, 1 Godiva Chocolate Strawberry: $6.50, 3 Mr.Cupcake Cupcakes: $6, 1 Rice Krispy Treat: $2.50.

Someone else can add that up while I stand off to the side and cry a little.

I'm not totally ok with her being fourteen (especially because I made her repeat 12 and never let her be 13...if you're wondering if I have the power to do that you don't know me. Up until the last month or two whenever anyone asked her how old she was she would quickly answer "Twelve!" with a wary glance in my direction. Recently it changed to "Almost fourteen."). I'm definitely not ok with her going to high school. But I guess I don't really have a choice, now do I?

So last night as we sat around and drank our hot chocolate Little Sister, Rookie and I had the following conversation.

Lila: "Chris, you're going bald."

Me: "I know."

Lila: "I don't like that, make it stop."

Me: "Doesn't work like that. I'll get balder and balder and balder and then I'll die."

Lila: "Chris! No! You can't."

Me: "Everybody dies eventually."

Lila: "No, I mean you can't go bald. You'll be scary looking if you're bald."

Danny: "Lila! What are you talking about?"

Me: "Thanks Dan."

Danny: "He's scary looking now."

Me: "Nice."


Gotta love my family...

Fried-Daze: I'm Drinking Milk

Monday night was pleasant and somewhat cathartic. You should never underestimate the rejuvenating abilities of spilling your guts to someone who absolutely does not give a shit. The entire mental health profession is built on the concept. I prefer for my therapists to be barely dressed and have Eastern European accents. To each their own.

I have absolutely no recollection of Tuesday at all. None. I remember being in the office at three in the morning while the thunder shook the entire trailer and then I remember Wednesday. That's all.

Wednesday I hit the youth room, taught the kids to play Farkle (although the voracity of my score keeping can come into question), had a much needed long overdue conversation with Mrs.K, and then stopped at the Wiz for a quick drink. (Lesson to be learned, you want me to buy a round of shots all you have to do is send me a text message that says "Wiz?" and wait fifteen minutes or so. I didn't even know who texted me, yet within a half hour I was knocking back a shot of Knob Creek and moving on to whatever was next.)

Thursday we took a look at some new busses, I was proven right about something I knew I was right about all along, and I ducked out a bit early to go to High Mountain for my sister's lip-sync. Back in 6th grade I did a lip-sync when it was student council only activity. It was fun, but we actually lip-synced. These kids just dance around and make asses out of themselves. There were a few good ones, but for most of the night Rookie and I sat in the back and cracked jokes. Last week at my sister's dance I saw Rookie and a couple of his buddies sitting on the steps. I jokingly admonished them for their ridiculously long hair and told them they all needed haircuts. Last night I saw two of them, one had buzzed his head and the other had cut his hair really short. I chuckled. Afterwards I wandered for a bit and commited a sufficient number of sins to ensure that my final judgement will, at the very least, be interesting.

This morning I was at the liquor store (more on that later) and on my way out I saw Forti and his wife walking with their new baby. I hadn't seen the baby in person yet, but now that I have I can assure you that she's just as cute as the pictures. After a few minutes of chatting I was off to the bakery to pick up a cake. See it was our yard guys 50th birthday last week and we'd missed it. He's a good guy, little slow, drinks too much. But a good guy. So to make up for it we bought everyone lunch, picked up two birthday cakes, and I stopped at the liquour store and bought him two cases of Heineken and a mini-keg. It gets time to cut the cake and we give him the beer and my father hands him a small black bag. When he opens the black bag inside is an inflatable sex doll. I don't know what creeps me out more, that my 70 year old father thought it was appropriate to give one of his workers an inflatable sex doll for their birthday or that he apparently knew where to buy one. After lunch I hit up the bank, and stopped by the barbershop. My hair had grown into an unruly mop in the past month and I needed to get it chopped down to size. I haven't really shaved my head since I started balding so today I figured fuck it and had it buzzed to a 3 1/2. I figured the baldspot would show pretty clearly (and it does) but what I wasn't figuring on was the gigantic bald patch below the baldspot. The barber pointed it out before he cut there so I wouldn't think he did, and then reminded me that I mentioned last time that my hair had been coming out in clumps before telling me that I should probably get that looked at. Fuck. I thought I was past that. Either way I'm not worried about how it looks. I'm a fat old balding man. My haircut is the least of my worries.

And now I'm sitting at my desk drinking milk for some reason and wondering what I'm doing for the next few days. Whatever it is I'm sure it will be a blast...and somehow end up costing me thousands of dollars just like everyone else.

And a final note before I go...to whoever (if they do exist) was so kind as to worry about me out loud to a common friend in the past weeks, good looking out. Totally uneccesary but good looking out. I've never really restrained myself in the stupid little things I write here, even when I know people are reading. It just would seem sort of dishonest. Sometimes I reword things, or dance around others, but I rarely restrain myself. Sure there are no longer posts with titles like "Things To Masturbate to While Drunk" and no longer stories that start with lines like "So there was this deaf girl with a gigantic dildo.." or "There I was, trying to get this Jehovah's witness to blow me..." but that largely reflects my ever mutating sense of humor, and not some new found late blooming sense of self-restraint. I am, as I always have been, an intensely and passionately honest and upfront person. There's nothing about me that the whole world can't know if they don't ask the right questions. I've got nothing to hide and plenty of (mostly shitty) stories to tell. But do not let this barely edited, rarely censored, often unfiltered slice of my mind confuse you in any way shape or form about the voracity with which I attack every aspect of my life. My name is Christian Palomba. I am many things. But above all...I'm still here.

Status Quo?

While I try and craft a new entry from the leftover remnants of everything I've ever stood for here is a chronological listing of every Facebook Status Message I've ever written...

March 5th, 12:07pm: "Christian Palomba is rapidly redefining the scope and meaning of the word "Incredulous".
March 6th, 1:51am: "Christian Palomba knows which way the wind blows."
March 6th, 4:12pm: "Christian Palomba is slightly in awre of how strange his life can be."
March 7th, 2:55am: "Christian Palomba would really like to know what the hell just happened."
March 9th, 2:21am: "Christian Palomba this Watchmen would have been better if there was slightly less penis or slightly more pants in it."
arch 9th, 12:40pm: "Christian Palomba feels like a pig shat in his head."
March 10th, 11:17pm: "Christian Palomba feels really old and tired...because he is really old and tired."
March 15th, 8:15am: "Christian Palomba is so ridiculously screwed."
March 15th, 9:07pm: "Christian Palomba is sort of surprised we all survived that one."
March 16th, 1:38am: "Christian Palomba has never tasted person."
March 17th, 5:30pm: "Christian Palomba is enjoying the only day of the year where he actually admits to being 37.5% Irish..."
March 18th, 3:44pm: "Christian Palomba would like to be doing something productive except his computer seems to have just realized it is an antique."
March 18th, 10:22pm: "Christian Palomba is loving lost."
March 19th, 3:28pm: "Christian Palomba is about to raise some hell."
March 20th, 3:22am: "Christian Palomba is a little worse for the wear, but still right here."
March 20th, 7:50pm: "Christian Palomba so say we all..."
March 20th, 11:51pm: "Christian Palomba is hearing nothing but the rain."
March 23rd, 1:32am: "Christian Palomba is like hey, uh, you wanna see my Iron Man?"
March 24th, 12:11pm: "Christian Palomba is Christian Palomba in a Christian Palomba production of The Christian Palomba Story."
March 24th, 7:42pm: "Christian Palomba is going offline to set up his new computer...this might take awhile."
March 25th, 2:55pm: "Christian Palomba is almost up and running...god damn network."
March 25th, 6:38pm: "Christian Palomba is not very happy with his network right now."
March 26th, 7:53pm: "Christian Palomba has a cool new computer, a cool new printer, and a cool new camera...but still isn't connected to his goddamn network."
March 28th, 6:25pm: "Christian Palomba has absolutely nothing to do for the next twelve hours...remarkable."
March 30th, 1:32am: "Christian Palomba knows."
April 1st, 9:46am: "Christian Palomba is finding entirely too man things entirely too amusing just this moment."
April 2nd, 6:32pm: "Christian Palomba is like "You gotta be kidding me."
April 4th, 7:04am: "Christian Palomba is thinking he probably should've stayed home and cleaned instead of going out last night...because this office just ain't agreeing with him right now."
April 4th, 5:55pm: "Christian Palomba is all tied up in nothing."
April 6th, 2:54am: "Christian Palomba feels like his head is about to explode..."
April 6th, 12:33pm: "Christian Palomba thinks it's entirely too early in the day to need a drink, and yet..."
April 6th, 4:29pm: "Christian Palomba is creating."
April 8th, 12:36am: "Christian Palomba thinks it's funny how that happens, and wonders if it would be even funnier if it wasn't."
April 9th, 12:53pm: "Christian Palomba can't quite believe it."
April 12th, 4:25pm: "Christian Palomba says you can't stop me...you can't even slow me down."
April 12th, 1:40pm: "Christian Palomba knows the whole world isn't out to get him...just a very small yet determined part of it."
April 14th, 12:24pm: "Christian Palomba is contemplating the vast and wonderous way that this world works...and wishing it was socially acceptable to drink at work."
April 15th, 3:26pm: "Christian Palomba is not reinventing the wheel...he's just reimagining it."
April 16th, 9:02pm: "Christian Palomba is walking..."
April 19th, 2:36am: "Christian Palomba knows the name, but can't quite place the face."
April 20th, 1:06pm: "Christian Palomba fears heinous fuckery most foul is afoot."
April 22nd, 12:20am: "Christian Palomba can't quite think of a status message to describe these past few days."
April 22nd, 12:21am: "Christian Palomba doesn't know exactly where these stories are going, but he's pretty damn certain how they're going to end. Yeah...that works."
April 23rd, 2:37am: "Christian Palomba is something something something and a half."
April 23rd, 12:27pm: "Christian Palomba apparently has very soft hands."
April 24th, 3:46pm: "Christian Palomba is suffering from a slight excess of undue fuckery, but should have it all cleared up forthwith."
April 26th, 1:25pm: "Christian Palomba is a wee bit under the weather, but since when has that stopped him from trying to have a good time?"
April 27th, 2:11am: "Christian Palomba is pretty goddamn beat."
April 27th, 10:56pm: "Christian Palomba is waiting..."
April 29th, 5:50pm: "Christian Palomba is laughing quite a bit right now, and intends to continue to do so for the forseeable future."
April 30th, 5:43pm: "Christian Palomba thinks alyssa devine is really hot"
May 3rd, 11:35am: "Christian Palomba just realized he's been wearing the same shirt for three straight days."
May 4th, 2:50pm: "Christian Palomba wonders how much trouble he could cause in a real short stretch of time if he really put his mind to it."
May 5th, 6:42pm: "Christian Palomba's going to get lousy tonight so he can get loud tomorrow. There's some sorting coming down the pike right about now. Should be fun."
May 6th, 1:02am: "Christian Palomba is thinking that probably wasn't the smartest thing he's ever done."
May 7th, 2:52am: "Christian Palomba is totally uncalled for."
May 8th, 1:21pm: "Christian Palomba is going to a dinner with the Bishop this evening...anyone want to guess how many ways this can go wrong?"
May 10th, 4:46am: "Christian Palomba never stops, never slows down, never surrenders..."
May 11th, 12:26am: "Christian Palomba needs a nap."
May 12th, 10:04pm: "Christian Palomba has had enough of the office for one day, and is now going home."
May 13th, 2:10pm: "Christian Palomba is ten types of tired...but still has a long afternoon in front of him."
May 14th, 3:39pm: "Christian Palomba is busy, then not busy, then busy, then not busy, then busy, then not busy...goddammit day make up your mind."
May 14th, 8:46pm: "Christian Palomba needs alcohol and food, preferrably in that order."
May 15th, 12:08pm: "Christian Palomba is really beginning to wonder which way the wind is blowing ...and if we're all going to last long enough to find out."
May 17th, 3:35pm: "Christian Palomba knows."
May 17th, 11:51pm: "Christian Palomba thinks this Dr.Pepper tastes really good...because you're a whore."
May 19th, 12:12am: "Christian Palomba says it's like playing Risk and you feel like you're doing pretty well and then all of a sudden you're stuck in Indonesia staring out at Siam with like a million of the other guys guys on it and you realize for one glaringly painful moment, "I am totally dicked right now."'
May 20th, 12:50am: "Christian Palomba wonders what you were doing down by the watermelons?"
May 20th, 10:20pm: "Christian Palomba has the answers, but can't quite find the questions."
May 22nd, 10:33pm: "Christian Palomba kills giants."
May 23rd, 4:51pm: "Christian Palomba would take pleasure in gutting you boy."
May 24th, 1:57am: "Christian Palomba is chaos..."
May 24th, 11:57pm: "Christian Palomba if it looks like Eric Bana, sounds like Eric Bana, and smells like Eric Bana it must be...Eric Bana."
May 25th, 10:15pm: "Christian Palomba needs a shave and a scotch."
May 27th, 2:50pm: "Christian Palomba is watching the world burn down on a close circuit television."
May 27th, 5:27pm: "Christian Palomba is aiming to have himself one hell of a night...not sure exactly how yet though."
May 27th, 10:19pm: "Christian Palomba is starting to wonder if the big sign over my life reads "Trouble: Open For Business"'
May 28th, 10:25pm: "Christian Palomba is out wandering for just a bit."
May 29th, 5:37pm: "Christian Palomba says, "You know that little voice in the back of your head that tells you when something you're about to do is a bad idea? Right now he's screaming."'
May 30th, 7:10pm: "Christian Palomba's got a fiddle and a box of matches."
June 1st, 4:16pm: "Christian Palomba says "There are days in a man's life where the illusion of a future he will never have is all that is necessary to sustain him."'
June 2nd, 10:12pm: "Christian Palomba is ten types of tired."
June 3rd, 12:44pm: "Christian Palomba going to get just a little bit silly...just a little bit."
June 4th, 3:10pm: "Christian Palomba makes the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round."
June 6th, 7:39pm: "Christian Palomba is wondering how after weeks of being so busy he could barely breathe...tonight he finds himself sort of bored."
June 7th, 10:38pm: "Christian Palomba needs a drink..."
June 8th, 10:15am: "Christian Palomba needs a drink..."
June 8th, 8:59pm: "Christian Palomba is not quite ready to call it a night...but will probably wish he had in the morning."
June 9th, 3:05am: "Christian Palomba lives to fight another day."
June 11th, 1:38pm: "Christian Palomba is the status quo."

Mr.Jimmy Vs. The Long Ass Werewolves And Another Odd Dream

I must have done a lot of drugs when I was younger and then totally blocked it out. I can think of no other reason for dreams like this.


It starts like it's mid-scene in a horror movie. There are a little over a twenty of us, some I know, some I don't, running through the streets of a burning city being chased by a pack of werewolf type monsters. We round a corner and run into a pile of debris blocking our path. Some in the group scramble over the debris rather easily, others struggle. I find myself with two other men trying to help several young women over the pile when the werewolves catch up to us. They tear one of the other men apart and are about to set upon us when an older man who was already at the top of the pile begins to fire at them with a silver plated shotgun screaming, "Mr.Jimmy's gonna getcha!". The first wolf he hits explodes giving us all enough time to find something to fight back with. More wolves are coming and we're fighting valiantly but losing. Mr.Jimmy is relentless though. He fires, reloads, barely takes aim and fires again destroying wolf after wolf. But they just keep coming. And now the other survivors are swarming back over the pile, there are werewolves on the other side as well. We're trapped on top of this pile but the number of wolves is dwindling now. We've lost a lot of people, but we've almost got them beat. And then the big wolf comes. We can hear it before we can see it, I'm holding one fairly large wolf off by the throat and beating it with a crowbar when the big werewolf comes bounding down the street leaps clear over a half dozen burning cars and lands right in front of Mr.Jimmy. The old man's already killed a dozen of the wolves but with this monster staring at him from mere inches away he hesitates...and then he's gone. Blood, guts, and the gun all that's left of him as the big wolf howls up at the moon. The gun's not ten feet away from me. I finish off the wolf I'm entangled with and make a mad dash for Mr.Jimmy's silver plated shotgun.

The big wolf gets there first and smacks me away, I'm hurting but it's given one of the other guys the opportunity to get a hold of the gun. He picks it up with a big grin on his face, brings it around so it's pointing at the big wolf, and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He panics, the big wolf takes him down. The gun falls pretty much on top of me, along with what's left of the other guy. I'm scrambling now, dodging the big wolf's claws and looking for Mr.Jimmy's remains hoping to find a shotgun shell or two so I can kill this big honking wolf that's currently trying to eat me and these other very nice people who seem to be standing around screaming or pissing their pants instead of trying to help me. I'm just about to cut and run when I see out of the corner of my eye two shotgun shells on top of the pile of debris. I rush back up to the top of the pile, grab the shells and turn to see the big wolf charging right at me. Shit.


I crack the shotgun, re-load, snap it back into place (in my head I hear Ash growling "This...is my boomstick.") and jab it into the maw of the snarling monster as he leaps to attack me. "Enough with the fucking werewolves already!" I scream as I discharge the explosive shell directly into the beast's face. It explodes rather pleasantly sending hairy little chunks of werewolf all over the other survivors. I stumble down the pile of werewolf corpses and debris and join the rest of the survivors to discuss what's next.
~
I'm not entirely sure what the next dream meant (as opposed to the last dream which I'm pretty sure meant I fucking hate werewolves), or when exactly it took place. It's sort of flitted in and out of my consciousness for the last few hours. I think it was a lingerer from Monday night mostly because I swear I could taste scotch during the dream (aside: while sitting at the bar on Monday night, just after the bartender nearly hugged me to death, she asked if I wanted my usual Glenlivet. Apparently they've begun to stock the good stuff because she asked me if I wanted the 12 year old or the 18 year old. Not wanting to drop $30 on a drink that I was three drinks past being able to appreciate already I said rather too loudly, "I'll take the 12 year old please." At which point a rather hairy gentleman sitting to my left began to chuckle loudly as he ashed his cigar in a rather Burgess Meredith as The Penguin sort of way and I all too late realized that in a place where women are the main commodity you have to be a little more careful in the way you word things, and you should always take the 18 year old.) So anyway, I'm driving my car and I'm tasting scotch. There are other people in the car with me, but I can't see who they are. I keep looking in the rear view mirror but every once and awhile I get a glimpse of the guy behind the wheel and it's not me, it's me from a long long time ago. And every time I look again I'm different, sometimes older and sometimes younger. But I don't change, just the reflection in the mirror. And then the ground starts to open up. These long dark cavernous cracks that swallow up trees and houses and everything around us. But I keep driving, and I'm dodging them all. And we round a corner into Haledon and everyone in the car with me is gone. But that's ok. Because I know I'm going to meet them. Except I get to Wizard's and it's gone. It's like it was never there, it's just a house. So I head back into Haledon (which I'd just driven through and everything was normal) but none of the Haledon bars are there either. Geez was a hairstylists and the Tavern was an appliance shop. But no bars. Everyone said to meet them at the bar, but none of the bars are there. I think maybe that they meant one of the go-go bars the guys and I frequent. So I head down to Bloomfield. The building is there and it looks exactly the same, except it's a school and not the bar. Now I'm really confused, and slightly upset. What the hell is going on? I see a guy I know standing on the corner so I hop out of the car and run over to talk to him, but he doesn't know me. I turn around to get back in my car but now it's gone too. It's cold, it's getting dark, and everything is very very quiet. And for the first time...I'm a little bit scared.

I Just Want To Fly

The skies are dark and filled with clouds. Without the stars I can't quite find my way.

It has been a mindfuckingly awkward month. Don't get me wrong I've spent a great deal of time with some of my favorite people, done a few fun things, and worked very hard but still had time for myself. You can't really ask for more than that. It was a pretty well rounded month as well. I spent a ton of money, but I also made a ton of money. I've shared in some highs and some lows with people I care a great deal about. I've had some fantastic conversations, seen some great movies, drank quite a bit of scotch, and laughed more than any man has any right to.

But it was a trying month. Some things have been said by entirely too many people about entirely too many things that six months ago probably would have had me standing on a ledge wondering which which way to leap. But I thank God and everyone I know every single day that I'm not where I was six months ago, or six months before that, or six months before that. Like everyone else I go through my phases...it's one of the few things still human about me. And if I was now where I was six or seven months ago I'm certain I would find myself in a much worse place. So thank God I could be there for the people that needed me in the past month, thank God that there were so many great people there for me when I needed them, and thank God I had someone to talk to tonight when I just needed to vent the excess pressure for an hour or so and walk away as if nothing happened at all.

I said some things tonight that I've never said out loud and as I said them I felt a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders. It was as if I knew all along what I needed to say, but I could never find anyone to say it to. So tonight I vented, and I bitched and I moaned, and I sort of got it all out there in a situation where not a single thing I ever say or do will ever matter. And when I was finished, although I seemed so much worse off than I was when I started, I was actually far far better. It didn't matter who was listening, just that someone was.

It was an unbelievably nice feeling.

I sort of hope that's how people feel when they come to me to talk.

So at 2 A.M. as the clouds grew thicker, the lighting began to flash, and the thunder began to rumble I realized that tonight (and by extension these past few days) ended up being pretty damn good.

And in the most ridiculous roundabout way I've discovered something else.

Christian Palomba never stops, never surrenders, never slows down.

I've already weathered the storm.

Now bring on the rain.

Something Went Wrong...

Bits of Lost Posts: Original Gangster, Latent Lament, The Gribble, and Waiting or Wanting

Original Gangster
"And as the pressure builds up, as things start to go south, as everyone and everything seems stacked against you there's this moment. This moment where you realize you're in over your head. In that moment only two things can happen. You can lose your shit right then and there or you can pull it all together and do everything you can to just scrape by. In that moment life makes all the decisions for you. No more waiting, no more worrying, no more ways to prolong the inevitable. You either call it quits...or you survive."

Latent Lament
"I'm sick of pretending that just because I've never really been in love that I don't know what it is to be heartbroken. I get it. I really do. The ones you want never seem to want you. And the ones that want you, you never seem to want. But you never really get the one you want until you get the one you want. And that's only if you're lucky. Some of us? No luck at all. No...there's all sorts of heartbreak kid, don't make the mistake of thinking any one is any worse than all the rest."

The Gribble
"He's a mistake on top of an error on top of a fuck-up, and to make it worse rational thought has never been one of his strong points. That boy would slit you open and watch the shit pour out just as soon as look at you. No, you don't need to be afraid of me. You've just got to be afraid that I won't stop him when he comes for you."

Waiting or Wanting
"When I was a little kid I used to stand in the window and stare down the hill, waiting for my father to come and visit. I did it everyday, even when he hadn't said he was coming. My old man got out of work at 5:30 and I'd stand in front of that window from then until my mother made me come to the table for dinner. More days than not he didn't show, even when he promised he would. I remember that feeling. That waiting, that wanting. I remember it very clearly. And that's sort of what I'm feeling now...except I don't know what it is I want, and I already know that just waiting won't do any good at all."

Angsty

At one in the morning I was doing hills on my treadmill while watching Rome and trying to convince myself that I haven't taken a major step backwards as far as exercise goes in the past few weeks.

At two in the morning I decided to see if I could mix some kicks into my fairly lame heavy bag routine, results were better than could be expected (meaning I didn't hurt myself too badly and rocketed the damn bag halfway across the basement at least twice even though several of my "kicks" barely shook the thing).

By four in the morning I had taken a cold shower and climbed into bed soaking wet and spent the next little while staring at the ceiling debating whether or not to shave my head and embrace my growing baldness and if it would be a good idea to buy some khakis and a few polo shirts that aren't black or dark blue.

At nine I was back on the treadmill, watching Rome again, feeling even worse than I did eight hours before.

By noon I had given up on the spring wardrobe, was severely doubting the whole head shaving thing, and couldn't decide if tonight held greater potential for salvation or disaster.

Damn. It's going to be another long one isn't it?

Delusional

The fly keeps crawling across my knuckles reminding me that despite what seems to be a sea of words swarming across my computer screen I haven't typed a single thing in hours. It's frustrating. The idea that what I think just happened didn't really happen. The notion that, even for a moment, I'm slipping...again.

One minute I feel like I could put my fist through the wall and the next my arms are so weak I can barely lift them off my desk. My head tilts back and to the right like my neck is suddenly not strong enough to support it and I find myself looking out the bottom of my eyes less I be stuck staring at the ceiling. Everything I think just seems slower, not less intelligent or less interesting necessarily...just slower. I wonder if this is what dying feels like.

My lips are dry, my throat is raw, my eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds. Dry little coughs rack my body, the pain in my chest resonating with each subsequent gasp. When I clear my throat to try and speak it's like my ribs are cracking with each word making everything I say sound more...painful...then it's meant to.

I'm so fucking tired. I'm so fucking spent. And yet that feeling stirs inside me, that voice echoes in the back of my head, those little blue sparks ignite behind my eyes and I know. It's not over yet. It is not over yet.

The raven sits high up in the corner and asks if I remember where he came from while the dark wolf lurks in the shadows staring hungrily at my heel.

All I have to do is sign the paper and I can go home.

All I have to do is agree with something I know is wrong and everyone will get off my case.

All I have to do is pretend to forget and everything will fall right into place.

All I have to do is do it all.

Just like it's always been.

Just like it always will be.

There is no light...we run on.

Left-Over Dreams

"There are days in a man's life where the illusion of a future he will never have is all that is necessary to sustain him." - Edward Allen Rigby, from Piccadilly Dreams



I haven't been writing much about my dreams lately, mostly because none have been substantial. Here are a few short ones from the past week that stuck with me.



Risk

I'm standing outside a 7-11 with these guys I used to know when some kid runs up to us and tells us that there are movie stars right down the street. We get all excited (or as excited about anything as I ever get) and run down the street. Seth Rogen and Bill Hader are standing outside the theater and they want us to come in and watch their new movie. We all go in and find ourselves in a packed theater. Rogen and Hader are standing near the front of the theater now and they tell us how proud of the movie they just made was, but they tell us they wrote and directed the film but weren't in it. People are a little disappointed but watch it anyway. It's not a comedy, it's really bad, but it's short so no one leaves. When it gets to the end Rogen and Hader go around with clipboards asking us what we all thought. Everyone lies and says it was amazing. They give us all board games to say thank-you and then we go and stand outside of 7-11 again.

Literary

I'm in a large university library. I'm standing at the end of one aisle reading a book when I look up and see a girl standing with her back to me at the other end of the aisle. She's staring out the window at something, but I can't see what. I can't see her face but I already know she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. I walk up to her just wanting to say hello, but she reacts as if we know each other and she's been waiting for me. She hugs me. We sit on the floor, me leaning against the end of a bookshelf, her leaning against me. We begin to kiss. I have no idea what I'm doing, but she does so it works out. I close my eyes. She breaks the kiss and she's just resting her head on my chest. I suddenly realize I don't remember what she looks like, so I open my eyes and look down. She's gone. But it still feels like she's leaning against me. I'm confused. I look up out the window, but there's nothing there.

On Empty

This one freaked me out a little. I'm in this restaurant we had dinner in last night. It's exactly like it was last night. We're even eating the same things (two orders of buffalo chicken sliders, one order of french dip sliders, and one corned beef sandwich a water, a diet coke, and two sprites). This all seemed very important. But I wasn't sure I was dreaming. We go to get into the car, but for some reason I use the auto-start. The engine revs but then sputters out. I'm worried I'm out of gas. When I get into the car it won't start either. But as I grip the steering wheel the engine roars to life. We keep driving but the fuel light comes on and the car just feels like it's handling lighter. Everyone seems real nervous because they don't want to get stuck out in the wilderness with me. For some reason driving from Clifton to North Haledon in this dream involved going through miles and miles of dense forest. We're going up this one hill when the engine sputters out again. Everyone panics, but as I grip the wheel tighter in frustration the engine charges up again. I realize that the tighter I squeeze the steering wheel the more power the car has. By the time I drop everyone off and pull into my driveway my hands hurt from being clenched so tightly for so long and my knuckles are pure white. I roll into the driveway, let go of the wheel, and the car dies. As I walk away it lets out a moan and falls into a million pieces.

This morning I get in my car and the fuel light comes on as soon as I start it up.


Hallways

I'm standing in a dark hallway running my hand against the walls to find my way. The way the walls feel reminds me of the walls in grammy-in-the-chair's nursing home when I was a little boy. I know that's not where I am though. I'm stepping on something large and heavy but I can't see what it is. I stumble a few times but don't take my hand of the wall, I'm afraid if I do I'll be lost forever. I hear other people up ahead and I call out to them. I recognize the voices but can't place them. I round a corner and hit a dead end. I'm feeling my way around to make sure there's no door when I find myself touching someone. There's a quiet sigh, it's a woman. She's sleeping. Standing up. My right palm is on her side but my fingers are still on the wall, my left on her hand. I gently squeeze her hand to see if she'll wake up, but she doesn't. I try whispering in her ear, but that doesn't work either. From somewhere in the distance there's a large explosion, and in a brief glare of light I see that I know who the woman is. It's dark again and I know I need to find my way out, but I can't wake her, and I won't leave her. I try to push her but she won't budge. I try to carry her but even though she's small I can't lift her up. I sit down the floor and for the first time take my right hand off the wall altogether. I reach up and hold her hand trying to think of what to do next.



Mixed Signals

I'm sitting in the youth room, but it's not really the youth room, it's more like the basement of my father's new house. Then I get a phonecall I can't take in front of everyone so I excuse myself and head down a long hallway that's not there in real life. When I get to the end of the hallway there's a mens' room and a ladies' room. I go into the men's room and lean against the door of one of the stalls while I take the phonecall. There's a girl on the other end of the line and she asks me where I've been, she sounds upset. I tell her I've been busy though I don't know why I have to tell her anything. She tells me we're through, I ask who she is. She says I damn well know who she is and that she's breaking up with me. I tell her she has the wrong guy, but there's no convincing her. She sounds so sad I can't even argue with her anymore. I ask why she's sad and she says it's because of me. I ask what I did and she says I know what I did. I say I'm sorry even though I have no idea what she's talking about. She says it doesn't sound like I mean it, so I find myself standing in this imaginary bathroom pretending to beg forgiveness from a girl I don't know about something I know I didn't do. When I finally hang up I'm actually a little upset, when I walk out of the bathroom everyone looks at me for some explanation as to what just happened. I just shrug and say, "Women, you can't say enough about them. You can't say anything to them." And then when I realize I'm quoting myself in a dream after having a pretend argument with a stranger in an imaginary bathroom I begin to laugh so hard it actually wakes me up.



"When you're lost in the woods and you find a path you follow the damn thing no matter where it leads. You just have to hope it leads out." - Lazarus Jones, from Piccadilly Dreams

Old Quotes & Scattershots: Letter Writing & Failure

It is important to me
That you know
The only thing I ever wanted
Was to be able to show you
That the truth
And what is real
Can be very different things.
- from Short Poems For Something Lost (Fall 2008)

My confidence shaken
my pride has been taken
I thought I could trust them God
I guess I was wrong.
Please tell me why God
I've been waiting so long?
- from Prayer (Spring 1997)

"At some point, between buying $100 worth of Jameson shots (Palomba & Co. killing bottles of mediocre whiskey everywhere we go since 1999) and trying not to ogle the pretty girls someone drunk ended up saying something that was actually pretty poignant, we drank to it. And then we drank to beautiful women, questionable sexuality, ceiling fans, and finally boobs.
It still all seemed remarkably dignified."
- from My Maserati Does One-Eighty-Five (Summer 2005)

"You know there's that moment, where everything slows down. Where it's just the two of you. Where the whole world is nothing but the space between you and her. That moment where your eyes give you away, and your very voice betrays you. That moment where you say the things you never meant to say. I'm afraid I've never had that moment."
- from I Know... (Winter 2005)

FADE TO BLACK (Winter 2005)

"So here we go...staring down the sunset and wondering what's next. Wondering where I'm going when I'm still trying to figure out where I came from. I've done it before and I'll do it again. I'll write about today... It was a good day. Not spectacular in any particular way, but pleasant in every little way. He said the right things, saw the right people, and when he closed his eyes at night he knew he'd done right by the world...and the world had done right by him. It was a rare day, of the sort that makes life worth living."
- from It is Written (Fall 2004)

Nero

I'm not angry, I don't really have anyone to be angry at.

I'm not sad. There's just no reason for it.

I'm certainly not confused, to me just about everything is crystal clear right now.

I'm not wrong. I don't know exactly what right is in any of these situations but I know enough to know I'm not wrong.

I'm not a lot of things.

But you know what I am?

I am pretty sure I'm totally fucked here.

Rome is burning. And I'm stuck playing my fiddle.

Stretch

I'd say today isn't going well, but the truth is it just isn't going much at all. I'm totally nonproductive right now. Nothing is getting done. Nothing is moving forward. I'm sort of trudging along taking care of the things that need to be taken care of immediately and just staring at the piles of things that don't.

I'm usually better than that.

I'm feeling a bit lost. There's a whole lot of hinting that I might be doing something horribly wrong here, and it's coming from all different directions and referring to all sorts of different things. The thing is I don't believe that anyone thinks I'm actually doing anything wrong. My father doesn't actually think I'm being shady or destroying the company, no one who hears my amusing go-go dancer stories actually thinks I'm fooling around with a go-go dancer, no one who knows how much time I spend with the church kids thinks I have any ulterior motives.

They just think the way I do things is weird. They think I'm weird.

They're right. Everything I do is weird. Everything I am is weird. I'm not different, or special, or exceptional in any way. I'm perfectly ordinary...I'm just not normal. I'm weird.

I've gotten used to that.

My old man can't understand why I don't care about money. Doesn't get why my goal in life isn't to amass as big of a fortune as I possibly can regardless of what it takes to do so. Doesn't get why I spend my money on others, or just give it away. Doesn't get what good it does me. There has to be some other reason for it.

My friends don't understand why I go to the places I go and do the types of things I do just to talk to someone. Surely there must be some angle. I must be trying to get something, or do something, or be something. There has to be more to it. There has to be something I'm not saying. There has to be some other reason for it.

Some people don't get why I spend so much time hanging out with people ten years younger than me. Why I deal with some of the bullshit that goes on, why I put so much time and effort and money into something that makes no sense to them. They don't get what I'm up to. They don't understand what I get out of it. There has to be some other reason for it.

But there's not. There's no reason for any of what I do beyond that it's what I want to do, or it's the right thing to do, or it just makes me feel better. I'm not half as complicated as you might think I am.

You don't think the same way everyone else does, you don't act the same way everyone else does, you don't want the same things everyone else does and people start to think there's something wrong with you. They start to think you're broken.

But I'm just not like everybody else. I just can't be.

Everybody's worried about the future, a future I probably don't have. So I'm not going to waste what I've got worrying about what I won't ever have. And I don't plan on letting anyone else do the worrying for me either.

I got this.

Really I do.

I'm not broken, I swear I'm not...I'm just a little weird.

When I Get Back From Where I'm Going: The Return Of Hob

"They say that something that doesn't kill you can only make you stronger, and if it does kill you...well then it's not really your problem anymore now is it?"- T.O. Hob, The Return

You know there's that point in your life where you stop, look back, and wonder..."How many people are left that I could possibly disappoint?"

And then you sort of wonder how you went so wrong when all you wanted to do was make sure everyone else was alright. You can't win them all, but you know what they call it when you can't win any of them? My life.

I'm a shitty person, a shitty businessman, a shitty customer, a shitty friend. I get that. I really do. But you never met a shittier person who tried harder to balance the scales then me.

I know what I am. And I know what I can't be. I'm sort of hopeless that way. Today just reminded me of that.

I talked to my old man about a couple of things today. Sort of in passing. There was a bit of a talk about surgery, and in what may be a first for me I admitted out loud that the idea scares the living shit out of me. We talked about me taking a vacation, and we briefly talked about me taking an extended vacation. And we had a half a second conversation about life, women, and growing old. And in that half a second I probably learned more about my father from the look he gave me then I've learned about him from anything he's ever said. It was sort of sad. I had a brief conversation with an old friend and I think she may have gotten the impression that I'm gone for good and until I realized that's what she thought I hadn't realized it might be true. And then I sort of wondered why the hell I'd be thinking that, until I realized there was no reason at all. That was sort of sad too. And across the rest of the night I saw and talked to people that mean the world to me and I sort of began to think about exactly what that world is made up of. And whether or not I really can stand being apart of it any longer.

I don't know if I'm destroying it, or it's destroying me.

Maybe it's time for me to say the word, and watch the whole world shift three inches to the right. I don't know. I just don't know anymore.

There's a pile of stuff on my desk just begging to be done, but I already know I don't have the head for doing it right this second. So I'm going to pack up, call it a night and head home and make a decision. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to bring Hob back and see what he thinks about the way my life has gone in his absence...


...but then again, I've spent the last ten minutes simultaneously writing this post and playing a game called "Zombie Hooker Nightmare Episode 2" while trying to remember if there's toilet paper in the office bathroom because I ate the meatloaf at the King George and I have to take a really ripping shit right now.

Really folks...does anyone expect any more of me at this point?

Deep

So the chances of me ever getting this last entry I've been writing up are slim to none at this point. You can't write a proper post about love and poetry when you can't quite figure out either one. So 'Latent Lament' becomes a lost post for the time being, and I'll try and get back to it before I'm old and grey. Or dead.

Today was a fun day. I didn't quite have the energy to run down to Belmar or trek up to Vernon so instead I went to the movies. Terminator Salvation wasn't bad, it just wasn't good either. Christian Bale...not fantastic in it. Never thought I'd say that. Sam Worthington was pretty damn good and I've always liked Anton Yelchin, he just didn't have enough to do in this one.

After the movie we went to Applebees and that sort of went like the movie too. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't good either. And now I'm back at the office just shy of 1:30 A.M. and I've got quite a hankering for some home time.

So yesterday's prophecy that this was going to turn into a long couple of days hasn't quite come true for me, but even as I type that I'm reminded...it's still early.

'night all.

giants

I'm old and I'm tired and I hurt on the inside, and although I have no real reason to think so I already know I'm in for a long couple of days.

My name is Chris Palomba and I'm the one who makes the walls fall down.

The Spider In My Camera

There's a spider in my camera. I don't know how he got there. I just know that I might not have noticed if his web hadn't grown so thick and tangled that it began to block my view. He sits there on his web, waiting for something, I know not what. And I sit here watching...and waiting as well.
~
I have no idea what I'm doing right this second. I'm normally fairly secure in the fact that nothing I do matters in one way or the other. I'm one of those people who would be glad if things that I did made a difference, but wouldn't be horribly disappointed if they didn't. Most of the time I rest easy in the fact that I'm not doing any harm at least. And then other times I'm not so sure. I'm pretty sure nothing I'm doing right now will ever make any difference...but I'm not totally sure. Maybe we're about to see that perfect storm where every stupid little thing I do actually somehow matters and I'm scared to death it will only be in bad ways.

I could sit here and think all night about these things I've done. Can sit here all night and worry about certain chains of events that I have put in motion. But the truth is that so small is the chance that anything at all wil come of it that I'd be wasting my time worrying about how badly it could go.

What will I do tonight? I'm not sure. There is somewhere I could have gone, but for reasons all my own I did not go. There's that bit of me that sits here and says it's still early, I could still make a run at it, but then the old tired rest of me screams to slow down and not get so far ahead of myself. There's that bit that says do whatever comes up because you don't know how far away tomorrow is and don't know what you'll be doing then. And there's that bit that says fuck it...just pack it in and go home because there is no way that one single human being could possibly take this much raw shit and still be standing. But then I look around. And I see so many people dealing with so much worse shit than me, and I know that they've got it so much tougher than I do and it doesn't make me feel better...but it reminds me that we're never alone in any of this. And though I watch other people struggle through the same exact shit over and over again and none of it ever comes close to being like any of what I've gone through, well it still just seems to fit. It still just seems to scream, "It's going to be ok." It just seems like the whole world keeps saying "It's going to be ok." Even though none of us are really sure that it's true.
~
I can see the spider every now and then crawling across the camera lense. I wonder how he expects to catch anything in the web, afterall he is all alone in there. And I wonder if when he realizes this he'll be able to get out...or if one of these days I'll be watching a dead spider stuck in his own web.

Gap

It would be nice if I could write a little bit today. I'm pretty goddamn down for the first time in a long time and I almost don't recognize how to deal with it right now. It's not even that today is a loss, it's more like a push. Saturday with the guys was a blast, and that one was already in the win column. Sunday night was a resounding success, although as has been pointed out to me since then it was missing a few people who would have most definitely made it even more fun. Monday was a solid day. Not an amazing day, but a solid day, the sort of day that lives are built on. And also a win. Yesterday was a win too. Sure it involved watching a movie that I alternate between calling "absolutely atrocious" and a "near miss" and I missed out on visiting an old friend, but it was still a blast. Today though...it was a tough day.

I still wasn't feeling all that well, I've been pretty beat in general lately, but the last two days I've been borderline ill. Their was some discordant fuckery (not necessarily heinous...but not necessarily not) at various points throughout the day and it left me feeling sort of bleh in general. There wasn't any coming back from it, but it just wasn't enough to call the day a loss.

I did manage to stop by the youth room for about an hour and hang out with some of the younger kids. I also heard that Forti's wife had the baby today and that's just brilliantly awesome. They're going to make great parents (shit, I never thought I'd say that...but it's true). And now I'm about to lock up and call it a night many hours before I usually would. I'll probably go eat some shit I probably shouldn't eat, and watch a movie, and read a little and still not fall asleep till the crack of dawn. But I'm getting the hell out of here either way. I keep thinking back to a day that seems like it was years ago but was really only a couple of months ago and how quickly things went wrong on that day. And I keep thinking about how I just stopped, took a few minutes to get right, and continued on trying to fix things and make it all better. I survived that day because I took a break, even a short one, something that I haven't been doing properly lately. That's something I need to work on.

I decided today that I'm going to begin wrapping up some loose ends, that it's about time I'm done with a few things in my life. I reckon it's being decided for me that I'm done with a few others but that will sort itself out as time goes by and I'll just have to make sure I'm ready for it. So there's going to be some changes and some things I try to change and when it's all done things will likely never be the same...but when are they ever around here anyway?

And just an aside...but I've just realized that it's five years to the day since I graduated college. Five years to the day and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

Cool

I was never big on Spanish poetry. I knew who Garcia Lorca was, knew the important role he played in Spanish history. I've read a few of his poems, but couldn't repeat a single line of any of them even with a gun held to my head. I knew he knew Dali.

I know who Dali was, although I freely admit I often confuse Picasso and Dali paintings even if I could picture both men in my mind and can easily separate them by remembering that I recall when Dali died, but that Picasso was gone long before I was born. I remember that both were born in Spain, both had really long names (20 words for Picasso, Only 7 For Dali...but still.), both married Russian women, and both were generally known as amusing assholes. I always remember that Picasso painted Guernica and Dali painted The Persistence of Memory (the melting clocks...duh) but I often get confused and think Picasso painted The Crucifixion and Christ of Saint John of the Cross (one of my favorite paintings) even though Dali actually painted both. I sort of assumed that being as they were two of the most famous painters of the past 100 years, and Spanish contemporaries that they would have met at some point, but I never really thought about it until tonight.

We went to see Little Ashes at this theater in Montclair and the basis of the story was the relationship between Dali and Garcia Lorca. It wasn't that great of a movie but it got me thinking. One of the other main characters is referred to in the opening minutes of the movie as "Luis" and it wasn't till a few minutes later that I realized it was the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel. I studied Bunuel in school and have a better grasp of how important he was to film then Garcia Lorca was to literature. It's hard not to understand how important Dali was to art. Later on in the film it's pointed out that Dali was introduced to Picasso by Bunuel and it sort of got me thinking. There are these extremely important people in history who just sort of hung out together. There were famous people going all the way back in time who were just sort of buddy-buddy. I mean you'll always have people who were famous because of their association (Nobody would remember Mussolini without Hitler, if not for Cheech then Chong would have been just another stoner.) But here were four people, all famous and important in their own right who just so happened to repeatedly cross paths. I didn't catch if Garcia Lorca knew Picasso so let's drop Pablo out of this one, but Garcia Lorca, Bunuel, and Dali coexisted as close friends in some combination for over a decade and likely would have continued on for many more decades if not for Garcia Lorca's untimely death.

You see it all throughout history, people who will be remembered for hundreds of years and who just so happened to be close friends from Byron and Shelley to Pitt and Clooney. Sometimes it's a byproduct of traveling in the same circles or just repeatedly working together. Other times it's a common origin, or a common desire for greatness. Either way it's something that has always interested me because it provides for a fascinating "What if" scenario. What if you were the third person in a conversation with one of these famous pairings? How cool would that be? How interesting would it be to walk into a cafe in Spain in 1922 look up and realize you're sitting at a table next to one of the greatest artists of all time (Dali), one of the most important poets of all time (Garcia Lorca) and one of the most influential filmmakers of all time (Bunuel)?

It would be fantastic...or at least a hell of a lot better than that fairly shitty movie I watched tonight.

I guess that was just a really long way of saying don't waste your time going to see Little Ashes no matter how great you think Robert freaking Pattinson is.

Odd

It's a little odd when the highlight of your day (week?) involves standing in a parking lot in the middle of the night shooting pixie stix and chugging energy drinks with a bunch of teenagers. A little odd...but I'll take it.

Progress, Regress, Success

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The Bark & The Bite

I don't get frustrated with people all that easily, but I'm getting a little frustrated right this second. See I bust my ass to run a succesful company, I put the time in every single day to make sure things aren't just done they're done right. But people never see that. I worked fifteen hours yesterday, but all anyone in the office talks about is that I didn't come in until 11 A.M. They ignore the fact that I was only gone for nine hours, they ignore the fact that my job was totally done as was a large chunk of theirs. It's like everyone thinks the little shoemaker's elves come in the middle of the night and take care of all this shit that they find done the next morning. Add to that the fact that no one can figure out exactly what I do or how I do it, they just know that something is happening and it's working out pretty well. Hell they know they get their checks every week and they know they're making more than they used to. That's all that should really matter to them anyway.
~
Last night I conked out pretty much the second I got home. I mean I barely made it to the bed before I was done. That doesn't happen often, but despite actually getting a solid few hours the night before I was just beat. I woke up an hour later, took my shoes and pants off, and went straight back to sleep.

The weird thing is I didn't have one of those crazy dreams I normally do when I'm really exhausted, or even one of the Alter-World type dreams. Instead I had a particular type of dream that I've had every year since I started college, always right around the time of finals. Keep in mind it'll be five years next week since I've been out of college. But ever since I was a freshman I've had this recurring dream that I'm studying for finals, but I can't remember where or when my final is. I can't find the phone number or e-mail of anyone in my class to double check. I can't even remember exactly who the professor is to look up their office hours. I'm not panicking because I don't panic, but I am getting sort of worried.

Finals were always weird for me in college, I could never figure out the rhyme or reason in changing hours and classrooms for midterms and finals. It was complicated by the fact that I transferred after my freshman year and Rutgers did things differently than Marist, and that year to year Rutgers did things differently as well. I never actually missed a final (I did ace one in eight minutes while inebriated, and then walk out of the next one because I was hungover) but I was never really sure when I showed up on the day of that I was actually in the right place. There was this one time at Marist where I gave up on a midterm because I didn't recognize any of the terms or topics and handed it in taking a zero only to find out that the prof had his schedule confused and had given us the wrong exam. Another time I had to take an exam in my profs office because they had bumped an exam up a half hour and I'd missed the notice.

Apparently this paranoia leads to these dreams where I'm slowly getting frantic because I can't find out when the exam is. Last nights dream found me in the backroom of my grandparent's old house. I was sitting in Popcorn's old recliner fiddling with the lightbulb in the old brass lamp that always sat next to it, just trying to get enough light to read by. It was history textbook of some sort. I was the the same age I am now, but my siblings and cousins were contemporary to the time we would have been in the old house. My grandparents were strangely absent, I seemed to know they were dead even in the context of the dream. But there I am studying for a history class I never took, flipping through my notebooks frustrated by smudged phone numbers, illegible e-mail addresses, and irrational times and room assignments (I had one exam scheduled for 3 A.M. February 24th, 2011 in Hoffman Hall, I don't remember a Hoffman Hall and I'll likely be dead by 2011, even if I'm not I still wouldn't show up for anything at 3 A.M. unless it involved scotch and Russian women or chocolate milk and fireworks). My cousins were trying to help me find the time and place of the exam, my little brother and sister were running around bouncing off of things. Everybody but me was finding it all very funny. I was just getting frustrated. The kids kept getting louder. More and more notebook pages were blank where I just knew something had been written down before. Pictures are falling off the walls, I go to the refrigerator to get something to drink but it's empty. It's getting hot and stuffy but all the windows are stuck shut and I can't reach the air conditioner because the ceiling keeps getting higher and higher. I'm getting all worked up and I'm just about to scream as I throw open the old dusty curtains on the sliding glass doors but where the porch my grandmother used to sit on to listen to the birds and feed the squirrels was there is not nothing, only darkness. And I'm slightly perplexed.

Then I woke up, and all I could think of in place of the million things I've been locked in on lately was that I was very glad that I didn't have to find out when and where that history exam was.
~

My next thought after waking up was "What the hell is that feeling in my chest?" Because apparently last week's miserable allergies have all decided to migrate down into my lungs and now I'm hacking away every time I try to take a breathe. It's so deep and gritty a cough that every time I catch a fit sitting here at my desk my god damn guard dog starts howling in response. I'm actually not feeling sick at all, but I can feel all this shit building up and it's not exactly comfortable. So yeah, hopefully my allergies won't flare up again because then I'm really dicked, and hopefully I'll get some real rest tonight because I'm frakkin' exhausted, and hopefully I won't dream about anything but sunshine and fucking because it would sort of be nice to wake up with a smile on my face.